High growth
Former BlackBerry chief financial officer diving in deep to help startups grow big
WATERLOO REGION — For Dennis Kavelman, the 401 is a super highway leading to the next big thing in Canadian tech — even with the gridlock.
“You know, no matter how many times you do this drive, it never gets pleasant,” says Kavelman.
In his new role working with startups in the Toronto Waterloo Corridor, the former BlackBerry executive is on the 401 a lot.
About seven years ago, the former chief financial officer and chief operating officer of BlackBerry moved to Toronto. A few months ago, he joined venture capital firm iNovia as a general partner. His job with the Torontobased company is to mentor and advise startups that could become global corporations with billions in annual sales.
“I want to work with a fairly small number of the high-potential ones, and just really dive in deep,” says Kavelman.
These days he’s working with two high-profile Waterloo Region startups — Thalmic Labs and Vidyard. Combined, the two fast-growing companies in downtown Kitchener have raised more than $200 million and employ more than 400 people.
Thalmic and Vidyard are among the leading startups in the Toronto Waterloo Corridor, which is ranked among the top 20 innovation clusters in the world. It is second only to Silicon Valley for the number of tech workers. The Waterloo Region end of the corridor is the third-largest tech sector in Canada, behind only Toronto and Montreal.
“I am a big believer that Canada is ready, and has the right ingredients in place now to grow some more huge tech companies,” says Kavelman. “I think our region and our corridor are the heart of that.”
He joined iNovia because of the firm’s track record in supporting both early stage startups and fast-growing ones with the potential to become a Canadian technology champion, like BlackBerry once was.
And he believes there is lots of potential.
The way Kavelman sees it, the 16 universities and colleges in the corridor are graduating lots of smart students. It is cool to be an entrepreneur and there are lots of support programs for startups — incubators and accelerators in Waterloo, Kitchener, Mississauga, Toronto and elsewhere.
“I think the early-stage part is super healthy,” says Kavelman. “So how do we build more big companies?”
The short answer is “experience.”
The 47-year-old accountant has lots of that. When he joined BlackBerry in 1994, the company, then known as Research In Motion, had a handful of employees. When he left, the smartphone maker had 14,000 employees and $15 billion in annual sales. Its market cap was $75 billion.
After BlackBerry, Kavelman had a brief stint as chief operating officer with Kitchener elearning company D2L and became an angel investor before joining iNovia in April. Promising startups need experienced hands to become global players, he says, and that’s what he wants to do at this stage of his career.
“Because it gets hard the bigger you get, there are a lot of different issues that come up,” says Kavelman.
He looks for startups that have amazing technology and founders who will not sell to a big American tech company just when things are taking off.
“I think it takes a special type of founder. Obviously, you need to have amazing potential in your company, but then you have to wrap them in all the experience and support, and help them build an exec team that is capable of scaling.”
Kavelman worked for two of the best-known names in the Canadian tech sector — Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, BlackBerry’s former co-chief executive officers. As chief financial officer, he led the company’s private financing rounds and oversaw its initial public offering of shares. He managed the listing of BlackBerry on Nasdaq and TSX. In all, he was instrumental in helping raise more than $1.5 billion for the company.
In 2007, Kavelman became chief operating officer and managed BlackBerry’s expansion into Latin America, Southeast Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. For the last part of his career there, he was a special adviser to the executive team.
“I was very fortunate to live through one of the biggest and most successful scale-ups there were in this whole area, and learn from two amazing CEOs what it takes, how hard it is, how to do it,” says Kavelman.
“So now what I really wanted to do was find a way to take that experience and help create more really big companies. I was looking for a way to really support the whole corridor.”
He joined iNovia at about the same time as Montreal native Patrick Pichette, Google’s former chief financial officer. Pichette is also a general partner, and will work out of iNovia’s office in London, England.
“We just think it is time to put the growth expertise on top of the early-stage expertise,” says Kavelman.